Dennis Bakhuis

Dive site · sea · Sodwana Bay

🇿🇦 Two-Mile Reef, Sodwana Bay

Sodwana Bay, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

The southernmost coral reef in Africa, reached by driving an inflatable straight off the beach and through the surf.

Dives here
2
Deepest
17 m
Water
salt
First · last
2006
Also known as
2 Mile Reef

Revision 2 · changed 18 Oct 2026

History
  1. r2 18 Oct 2026 Photo size matches the file · Dennis Bakhuis
  2. r1 10 Oct 2026 Imported from the personal log · Dennis Bakhuis

Site data © divelog-sites contributors (ODbL), descriptions and maps CC BY-SA 4.0 · 53edcaf

1 map

Two-Mile Reef, about 2 km x 900 mBoat run through the surf · 1280 mBeach launch, Jesser PointJesser PointAnton's, southern tip of the ridge↓16 mStringer↓11 mCaves and Overhangs, inshore side↓16 mChain↓16 mBikini↓22 mMellow Yellow, south end of Bikini↓18 m4 Buoy, Pinnacles, Coral Gardens, Wayne's World, Simon's Cave↓12 mArches↓12 mN100 m
  • Entry / exit
  • Point of interest
  • Shoreline
  • Dive path
  • Coral / reef
  • Depth
Site map · 9 objects · 1 path · max 22 m

Two-Mile Reef off Sodwana Bay, about 2 km by 900 m at 9-35 m, reached by rigid inflatable launched through the surf from the beach at Jesser Point. Coastline and Jesser Point from OpenStreetMap; reef extent from the Sodwana dive centres (Coral Divers, Amoray, sodwana-bay.co.za) and its position from wannadive and the SeaKeys standard positions on iNaturalist, which give the named sections only to 0.01 degree, so the reef outline is an ellipse and every section position is approximate to a few hundred metres, placed by the descriptions (Anton's at the southern tip, Stringer south towards Quarter Mile, Caves and Overhangs on the shoreward side, Mellow Yellow at the south end of Bikini). The northern sections are grouped under one marker; Deep Sponge and Hopscotch (28-35 m, outside the reef) are left off because their position is not known.

Map © divelog-sites contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0 · 53edcaf

Two-Mile Reef is the largest and most dived of the Sodwana reefs — named, like all of them, for how far it is up the coast from the launch at Jesser Point. It runs roughly 2 km by 900 m at depths from 9 m to 35 m, and it is the main event of the whole area.

These are the southernmost coral reefs in Africa, kept alive at a latitude where they should not survive by the warm Agulhas Current running down the coast. The species list is Indo-Pacific — this is the western edge of the same reef fauna that runs all the way to the Pacific — but thinned out and pushed to its limit.

There is no harbour. The boat is a rigid inflatable, it is pushed off the sand, and it goes out through the surf line under full power with everyone holding the ropes. That is how every dive at Sodwana starts.

Two dives on 18 April 2006, to 17 m and 12.8 m. Dives 17 and 18 in the log.

Image: Whitebarred Rubberlip, Two Mile Reef Sodwana Bay 3974, South Africa imported from iNaturalist photo 40708059.jpg — (c) Georgina Jones, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Photos

Dived here with

Malcom Riccardo

2 dives at Two-Mile Reef, Sodwana Bay

  1. 18 Apr 2006 with Riccardo boat date18 Apr 2006 depth12.8 m time51 min water26 °C
  2. 18 Apr 2006 with Malcom driftboat date18 Apr 2006 depth17 m time43 min water26 °C

Sources

  • First-hand observation (Dennis Bakhuis)